The ESSA: A renewed attack on parents’ and students’ rights

The battle over high-stakes testing and the future of public education is back in play after the Obama administration’s latest moves.

THE PROPOSED regulations for national implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) signal that new Education Secretary John King is determined to continue the Obama administration’s relentless emphasis on high-stakes testing–by financial blackmail if necessary.

The passage of ESSA in late 2015 appeared to offer a concession to the growing concern that public schools are being taken over by high-stakes testing, which degrade curriculums and are misused to shame and blame teachers for the outcomes of an impoverished public education system and justify closing public schools in order to privatize the system with charters.

But in what can only be read as a tightening of the noose around the growing movement to “opt out” of state tests, King’s new regulations threaten states with financial sanctions should they fail to put a stop to test boycotting.

The proposed regulations do not prescribe how those rates must be factored into accountability systems, but they do require states to take robust action for schools that do not meet the 95 percent participation requirement. States may choose among options or propose their own equally rigorous strategy for addressing the low participation rate. In addition, schools missing participation rates would need to develop a plan, approved by the district, to improve participation rates in the future.

For many supporters and participants in the opt-out movement who believed that the tide was finally beginning to turn in their favor, these regulations are a sobering alert that the fight to ensure that students are treated as more than a score is far from over.

King might be the new Education Secretary, but he is making the same old mistakes: not respecting the voices of parents, teachers and students; doubling down on threats to financially punish students for boycotting tests; and digging in his heels to prevent the long overdue termination of standardized testing.

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NEW YORK, where King was the state education commissioner before his promotion this January, has been at the center of these swirling crosscurrents as officials scrambled to contain the crisis of testing legitimacy.

More than 200,000 students opted out of the New York’s standardized tests in 2015, and it’s estimated that similar numbers refused the tests this spring–one of the largest test boycotts in U.S. history.

But now what looked like significant victories for the opt-out movement on both a local and national level appear to have been just temporary respites. Soon after the DOE’s punitive new regulations were announced, DNAInfo reported that 16 New York City schools had been ruled ineligible for up to $75,000 in grants because of their high test refusal numbers.

Semantics aside, it appears that these schools might be the test case for New York to determine whether “robust actions” are capable of reining in the powerful opt-out movement.

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SO IT looks like the heated battle over public education is still on. It’s a battle that pits those who work for and/or send their children to public schools against those with a stake in seeing more funding diverted to testing companies and charter schools.

High-stakes standardized tests imbue toxic levels of stress into a school–as anyone who works in one knows quite well–bringing profit to education corporations at the expense of children’s well-being. John King is the mediator of this conflict between everyday people and a hugely profitable testing industry, and it’s clear what side he is on.

The opt-out movement has its work cut out for it, not least because both leading presidential candidates have dismal platforms for public education.

Donald Trump wants to gut the DOE and bust teachers’ unions, and Trump University is an infamous example of the horrors of privatized education. But Hillary Clinton has a long record of backing charter schools and high-stakes testing. She should be confronted at every turn this fall by public education supporters demanding that she oppose these DOE regulations.

Parents, teachers and students fighting for everyone to have the right to a rich and meaningful education are going to have to continue building on the grassroots strategies that have made the movement to into the impressive force that it is today in order to meet this next round of challenges.

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4 comments on “The ESSA: A renewed attack on parents’ and students’ rights”

Karin Engstrom

June 24, 2016

Do not hesitate to send your comments on these regulations. Go to: https://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/essa/nprmaccountabilitystateplans52016.pdf
Don’t be intimidated with 200 pages. This site is easier to read than the Federal Register, published on May 28th. The Federal eRulemaking Portal is: http://www.regulations.gov, but it is easier to write a letter to Meredith Miller, US Department of Education, 400 Maryland Ave. SW, Room 3C106, Washington, DC 20202-2800. They are not accepting email or fax. The deadline is August 1, 2016
I’ve commented on Federal Regulations for years and the agencies take advantage of timing. We can ask for an extension of time since they released the document at the end of the school year – a time when schools, districts and the state are completing the budgeting for next school year and closing out this school year. This isn’t an accident. Send a postcard. I’m doing that today!
Pick out one item that you can speak to. What are the consequences of these rules in your school, district or state? Or, how do these rules affect you personally? Students should write why they opted out or suffered from the testing requirements.
These regs do not reflect the intent of our Senator Murray when she wrote this law. There should be petitions from unions and school districts opposing these rules and calling them for what they are. My first question is, “Where’s the federal money to pay for these requirements?”

OSPI is holding Regional Forums throughout the state. I’m wondering what the cost is for all these committees and hearings and where the money is coming from. I’ve been reading some of their meeting notes. A nightmare of bureaucracy! Go to http://www.k12.wa.us/essa Attend a forum if you live in Washington State.

You bring home the true pain of working as a teacher inside low-income schools during long years of a test-score-based school “reform” — feeling the abuse, being treated so badly, watching an unhappy reality unfold in front of my eyes and yet having to ALSO watch not only my district’s teachers’ union but the larger state union AND both national unions adopt and uphold the very dictates which were systematically dismantling my ability to teach. While so many teachers’ unions keep jumping up to get on board with insanity, our profession slowly dies.

Everybody thought ESSA was going to be so awesome. NEA and AFT backed it like it was the best thing since white bread. I saw red flags all over it and I knew John King would abuse it. The best thing is this: I warned NEA and AFT in several articles and they completely ignored me. Now they are crying wolf…

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